Alphonse Mucha's Cycles Perfecta Art Nouveau Illustration - The Cycles Perfecta poster by famous Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha is certainly a striking image -- a gorgeous woman with flowing har, in reds and blues, lying atop a bicycle handlebars. This is the perfect image for someone into cycling! The beautiful woman's tentacle-like hair is the of the Art Nouveau movement, around the turn of the last century. Cycles Perfecta is highly graphic and finely detailed, in flowing fields of reds, greens, and bronze. This poster was originally published in 1902 -- at the height of the art nouveau period. About Cycles Perfecta by Alphonse Mucha In the 1890s and 1900s, posters like Cycles Perfecta were quite common in the center of the French culture, especially in Paris. Parisian posters at the time were done in lithography, which produced an excellent quality of printing. Talented artists like Alphonse Mucha were very much into the poster scene at the time, and there were many opportunities for artists to make a living doing posters, magazine covers, and other commercial art. Aphonse Mucha had a distinctive style, and produced many Art Nouveau posters and graphics in his day. He was a Czech painter and decorative artist, and was well known for his unusual style that graced the pages of magazines and was placed on postcards and other designs. He influenced many modern works -- including the Japanese Manga series Sailor Moon, Marvel Comics borrowed Mucha's style for several comic book covers, and his influence was obvious on 1960s psychedelic posters.